SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING STORAGE SPACE

• US 20170357453A1
• Filed: 09/23/2016
• Published: 12/14/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: KO, Steve S., CIUDAD, Jean-Pierre, YANAGIHARA, Kazuhisa
• Granted Patent: US 11,531,468 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/023 Free address space management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0605 by facilitating the interaction with a user or administrator
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0608 Saving storage space on storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0641 De-duplication techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0649 Lifecycle management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0652 Erasing, e.g. deleting, data cleaning, moving of data to a wastebasket
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/067 Distributed or networked storage systems, e.g. storage area networks [SAN], network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

Disclosed herein is a technique for managing storage space in a user device. Users are provided with options to manage storage space usage in an organized and efficient manner. The options can include recommendations to the user regarding automatically and/or manually purging data from the user device to free up a particular amount of storage space that is needed to carry out a particular task.

Claims

1. A method for managing storage space in a user device, the method comprising:

receiving a request for a particular amount of storage space;

determining whether the particular amount of storage space is available in a storage device accessible to the user device; and

in response to a determination that the particular amount of storage space is unavailable;

generating a storage management interface that presents;

one or more user-selectable options that allow the particular amount of storage space to be made available, and

one or more assets that can be manually deleted from the user device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the request is received from an application or a process that requires the particular amount of storage space to carry out a task.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to move a portion of data associated with the one or more assets to a remote storage system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to remove a local copy of at least one asset of the one or more assets from the storage device.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the at least one asset is a re-downloadable asset that can be re-downloaded from a remote storage system.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the at least one asset is an old asset that has not been accessed by a user of the user device for a particular time period.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to delete derived data that can be re-computed at the user device.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more assets are sorted based on a last accessed date for each asset or a size of each asset.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more assets comprise one or more media assets, and the storage management interface indicates whether a particular media asset of the one or more media assets has been completely watched or read.

10. A computing device comprising:

a processor;

a storage device configured to store instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the computing device to;

receive a request for a particular amount of storage space,

determine whether the particular amount of storage space is available, and

when the particular amount of storage space is unavailable;

generate a storage management interface that presents one or more user-selectable options that allow the particular amount of storage space to be made available.

11. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the request is received from an application or a process that requires the particular amount of storage space to carry out a task.

12. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to move data associated with one or more assets to a remote storage system.

13. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to remove one or more local copies of one or more assets from the storage device.

14. The computing device of claim 13, wherein the one or more assets are re-downloadable assets that can be re-downloaded from a remote storage system.

15. The computing device of claim 13, wherein the one or more assets asset are old assets that have not been accessed by a user of the computing device for a particular time period.

16. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the one or more user-selectable options include an option to delete derived data that can be re-computed at the computing device.

17. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the storage management interface further presents one or more assets that can be manually deleted from the computing device.

18. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the one or more assets are sorted based on a last accessed date for each asset or a size of each asset.

19. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the one or more assets comprise one or more media assets, and the storage management interface indicates whether a particular media asset of the one or more media assets has been completely watched or read.

20. A non-transitory computer readable medium configured to store instructions that when executed by a processor of a computing device, cause the computing device to perform steps that include:

receiving a request for a particular amount of storage space;

triggering an automatic deletion of data to free up the particular amount of storage space; and

in response to a determination that the particular amount of storage space is unavailable;

generating a storage management interface that presents one or more user-selectable options that allow the particular amount of storage space to be made available.